Update: The source of Dfd now is free (GPL). Here's the new FreeDFD project.
Introduction
Dfd is a WYSIWYR Flowchart Editor and Interpreter: what you see is what you run. It allows you to edit and run algorithms represented as flowcharts. It's meant to be used for beginners, although you can use it for building complex algorithms, even using recurrent calls. It currently runs under Windows and under GNU/Linux using Wine.
Initial window with an empty program:
Una vista generar de la barra de herramientas.
Toolbar:
It was written by Nelson Castillo, Eduardo Daza and by Fabian Cardenas.
Ten years ago, our teacher Emperatriz Zapata used flowchats. She was using a book called "Soluciones Secuencies" by Fabian Rios, a teacher at the Universidad de Antioquia.
I already knew how to use (C and Basic) and Eduardo learnt C quickly. We noticed that people had a hard time writing flowchats in paper because they had to test them by hand, which is ok, because you have to learn how to follow a program's execution in your mind, but it was quite easy for them to make unnoticed mistakes which would cost them a lot later (specially when you can reproduce the same mistakes on a written test).
We started the project and we spent almost a year writing it on out free time.
Many liked the result and since then we're make the program freely available on the internet (It's free as in free beer).
It's being used in many Spanish Speaking countries. It doesn't seem to have bugs (only usability bugs). We really debugged it a lot.
If you want to see how it work, you can either:
- Read this Dfd tutorial. thanks to Profesor Alberto.
- Download it and run it under Windows (95/98/NT/2000/Millenium/XP...).
- Download it and run it under Wine. I just tested it and it works well. Azul doesn't have excuses anymore for not trying it. Unfortunately, the windows help doesn't work inside of wine. But it's available in PDF format:
- http://geocities.com/arhuaco/files/manual_dfd.pdf Dfd Help (Spanish). Thanks to Rafael Arteaga who converted it using the Windows Help we provided.
How about porting it to work with GTK+?
Well, I think I can't do that. I am one of the authors but not all the authors think that releasing it is a good idea. I know they have good reasons for that. We spent a lot of work on how objects are placed automatically in the screen and I think it's the hardest part.
It would be rather easy to modify it and have it print pseudocode.
Alternatives
- Rur-ple
- RUR-PLE is an environment designed to help you learn computer programming using the language Python.
Last update: 2006-10-27 (Rev 9031)